From mock duck to alternative milk, faux leather to beauty filters, we’re all faking it, not making it right now. This year, cultural commodities were characterised by a sense of mimicry, a life filled with substitutes: cheaper, greener, kinder, simpler versions of real things. It is: the ersatz era.
Ersatz, if you were spending more time daydreaming than listening in history classes, is a German term from WW1, referring to inferior substitute goods created to counteract shortages. Kaffee-Ersatz, for example, constituted over five-hundred different coffee brands made from acorns, chicory and beechnuts. Elsewhere, salad oil was made from 99% plant secretion, eggs were potato flour and sausages had literal sawdust in them. It wasn’t just food either; wood and paper was used to create shoes, petroleum was turned into synthetic rubber and benzene became heating oil. Nowadays, the term means anything that’s not real or genuine — figurative or literal — like ersatz emotion or even ersatz celebrity gossip.
Sound familiar? Well, we might not be making acorn mockchas (sawdust sarnies), but we’re definitely living in an increasingly ingenuine, unreal world. Part of this is down to the exact same cause of wartime ersatz goods: scarcity. “I like that term, ersatz era, it’s got a great ring to it,” says Zachary G. Arens, Assistant Professor of Marketing at the Spears School of Business. “On one hand, from a historical perspective, people have so many options today,” he says, citing the pluralism and choice that the internet and media has afforded. “So, in one sense, consumers don’t need to substitute, because chances are that they can find exactly what they want.” In practice, though, this utopia of choice isn’t happening right now. “Inflation has made a number of products and services unaffordable, forcing people to turn to substitutes. COVID-19 and Brexit have disrupted the supply chain, creating shortages.”
We know this all too well: Brexit has added £6bn to UK food bills and caused mega supply chain issues; the pandemic saw shortages of everything from PPE to flour; and the war in Ukraine has led to oil prices soaring and sunflower oil disappearing. Then there’s the impact of extreme weather on harvests, the subsequent rise in feed prices and the fall in farmers’ pay all causing havoc across the agricultural industry.
As the tabloids like to consistently point out, empty shelves are now the norm (unless, of course, they’re stacked with fake cardboard cutouts of food). According to the Institute for Government, business stock levels were at their lowest since 1983, and all these shortages are forcing us to adopt substitutes. Once upon a time, a hummus hiatus was a little bit of a laugh; now, we’re earnestly told to make eggs without eggs or wear layers instead of putting on the heating. Sriracha-maker Huy Fung has stopped taking orders, a third of chippies face closure, honey is a goner and we’re literally having to cut the mustard. Oh, and all that ecstasy you did in 2021? That was 3-MMC!
Substitutes, in consumer research, are a big deal; they can have a significant impact on our psyche and lifestyle. This all comes down to a theory known as ‘internal restriction’. We’re forcing ourselves to switch to substitutes based on self-imposed restrictions, not actual ones, although it does include cutting down on our spending (something that’s caused by inflation and the like, obviously). Rising prices and falling wages has led to us switching big brands for own brands, budgeting by buying cheaper versions of existing alternatives (RIP Lurpak).
There’s also the so-called Lipstick effect. “It says that during an economic recession sales of inexpensive indulgences increase,” Zachary explains. “People can’t afford major indulgences, like vacations, so they treat themselves to minor ones, like lipstick, instead,” he says, as a form of substitute. It’s why we’re emotionally spending like crazy right now on smaller, cheaper treats — an appropriately ersatz way of substituting our real desires for things to fill the void.
We’re smoking vapes instead of cigarettes (or even, for ersatzception, fake vapes), guzzling Huel’s gruel instead of meals, drinking alcohol-free booze and eating naked katsu — the ultimate in oxymoronic ersatz since it literally means ‘unbreaded, breaded cutlet’. Probably the most monstrous substitute created this year was healthy Coke, that TikTok sewage drink that was just soda water and balsamic vinegar. Our focus on sustainability and ethics is fuelling our ersatz era; we’re switching from leather to AppleSkin, plastic to bamboo, vacations to staycations. Fake vegan chicken is here, comprised of wheat gluten; meanwhile oat milk contains rapeseed oil. A self-imposed ersatz diet.
Of course, there are some pluses to making switches. “Most of the world is benefiting from access to things that were beyond their reach,” says Carey Morewedge, Professor of Marketing at Boston’s Questrom School of Business. “Everyone now has more options. Hopefully these trends result in more sustainable consumption practices,” he says, optimistically. The more alternatives we have, the more chance we have to make greener choices, an empowering form of self-control.
Ultimately though, our ersatz era leads to a whole lot of ennui and dissatisfaction. Research suggests that while people prefer substitutes in the same category – like pretend steak instead of steak – it doesn’t satiate our desires. “When people get an inferior substitute that is similar to what they want, it leads them to compare the two and feel dissatisfied with the substitute,” Carey says. “We find that people tend to be happier when the substitutes they choose are dissimilar enough that they’re difficult to compare to the thing you couldn’t have.” This, in turn, can lead to more misery. Basically, if you end up substituting ice-cream for a low-fat version, rather than something healthier but totally different like a smoothie, you’re more likely to end up eating actual ice-cream as well. “This applies to saving money too. Personally, I recently bought a discount shirt rather than the expensive brand in order to save money,” Zachary Arens says. “But the shirt I bought was poor quality material; it didn’t quite fit right and I never wore it. Eventually I ended up buying the expensive brand too. My attempt to save money ended up costing me more money.”
Perhaps the scariest, fakest area of them all, though, is the digital world. While BeReal might try to convince you you’re doing exactly that, online goods and services have long become substitutes for actual, tangible things; filters, digital fashion and virtual meet-ups are ersatz experiences. “More of what we are using is ephemeral,” Carey Morewedge explains, noting that streaming means we “no longer own the things we use.”
He terms this “liquid” rather than “solid” consumption; a dystopian existence where our psychological ownership dissolves and value dissipates. “Where we may really be suffering is the replacement of in-person physical interactions with virtual interactions online,” he says. “I think the pandemic taught many of us the value of the in-person interactions that we enjoyed. We did a Zoom Christmas with our family in 2020, and it was one of the saddest reminders of how meaningful it feels to see loved ones IRL.”
The most mind-scrambling element of the ersatz era? That mental simulation has become a substitute for physical experience. Carey’s research suggests that “in general we find that simulating a consumption episode seems to reduce craving for that thing”, compared to just “thinking about” the thing, which does the reverse. In other words, thinking about cocaine makes you crave it, but imagining actually doing a line reduces cravings. Or, if we apply it to everyone’s favourite activity – manifestation – thinking of a dream job makes us want it more, but imagining getting that job probably isn’t even useful; it gives us a momentary satisfaction that reduces our motivation.
All in all, subs are dominating our lives, and it doesn’t seem all that sexy. Although some alternatives can help us be better people, and more ethical, environmentally-friendly switches are welcome; the overall psychological effect of all this ersatz stuff normalises the kind of pretending and play-acting that damages the human experience. Basically, to paraphrase Shakespeare himself, all the world’s a stage; all the people merely NPCs.